“BRICS ambit has grown” – Menon
January 10, 2013, 1:37 pm

The BRICS National Security Advisors (NSA) have ended what was described as a “very successful meeting” today in New Delhi.

The national security advisors from the five countries that represent BRICS, namely Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa discussed issues of common concern.

Turmoil in West Asia, North Africa, Syria, Libya and Male were top of the agenda.

Other issues discussed were piracy, terrorism and cyber-security.

The Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon while briefing the media after the meet said that the discussions among the representatives underlined, “It is for the Syrian people to decide their future. The international community can only be a facilitator in that process.”

He reiterated, “BRICS feel there are no military solutions to the Syrian problem.” He also raised concerns about the troubling rise of extremist and terrorist forces in Syria.

The security advisors also discussed issues of cyber-security – the representatives exchanged ideas of how to cooperate to tackle the menace, including constituting emergency response teams to be put in touch with each other.

Menon said BRICS “which started as an economic idea has grown stronger”.

He said that with issues of global governance, political developments in the world are also being included in discussions, “slowly the ambit of what BRICS has worked on has grown”.

The most widely anticipated idea of the BRICS Bank has now “ripened”, he said.

The BRICS NSAs have been meeting since 2009 on the sidelines of the BRICS Summits.

This meet in India, however, was the first stand-alone meeting of BRICS NSAs and is being seen as an important one to finalise the agenda for the 5th BRICS Summit in Durban.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.